Thursday, January 9, 2014

LIFE

            Yesterday Erin and I had our weekly “date night.” We went to catch a movie in the afternoon and then had dinner immediately afterward. The film we saw was The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, a loosely based adaptation of James Thurber’s short story of the same name. We had wanted to see it during the winter break from school but never had the time to do so. And, considering a former student of mine heartily endorsed it, we chose that out of our options.

            I’m not going to review the movie or anything. It was pretty good overall and what I highly enjoyed were the sweeping, breathtaking vistas of remote places like Iceland and the Himalayas of Afghanistan. It was certainly a beautiful film from a cinematographic perspective. But above even this, the single element I liked the most was the motto of the LIFE magazine where Walter worked:

To see the world, things dangerous to come to, to see behind walls, to draw closer, to find each other and to feel. That is the purpose of life.

            This was especially serendipitous to see this quote in the movie because not an hour earlier in the day at school I was having a conversation with a current student about life. It was tough for me to distill the purpose of life to her in the moment, but I did mention love, relationships, and having experiences both good and bad. It seemed uncanny to me that this student and I just had a discussion about the purpose of life only to see it unexpectedly in the movie.

            What do you think of this quote? Is it a good summation? How would you describe the purpose of life in general? The purpose of your life specifically?

Please comment below or add your own questions to the discussion.

2 comments:

  1. The purpose of my life is to help others as well as my self by making good choices and learning from my mistakes.

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  2. The purpose of my life is to help others as well as myself by making good choices and learning from my mistakes. Life is having good and bad experience, and learning to make the best of every situation.

    ReplyDelete